Mighty Memphis no match for Spurs

Getting to the midpoint of the regular season halfway to another 60-win season meant nothing to Spurs coach Gregg Popovich.

How his team secured its 30th victory in the first 41 games of the 82-game NBA grind, a 103-82 victory at the AT&T Center against a very good Memphis team, meant everything.

“We’ve only got one goal,” Popovich said. “We don’t start any season saying we want to win this many games by this time of year, that kind of thing.

“You can win a game and play poorly; you can lose a game and play really well. It’s more about that. Records don’t mean anything.”

What mattered most, he said, was that his team had played really well in their first game without injured guard Manu Ginobili, apt to miss another six or seven games with a strained left hamstring.

“It’s the best we’ve played in about two weeks,” Popovich said. “We’ve had a tough time putting it all together the last couple of weeks for whatever reason. They’ve worked hard the last three or four days, both film and practice, trying to get it back the way we need to play to win.

‘”We can’t take things for granted. We can’t skip steps. Tonight, we were pretty sharp at both ends of the floor.”

The Spurs’ defensive acuity was best measured by one of the more remarkable facts of a night full of you’ve-got-to-be-joking details:

For 10 minutes and 36 seconds of a stretch that began with six minutes remaining in the third quarter, the Spurs did not give up a basket. The Grizzlies got up only nine shots during that time frame and missed them all. They did not get a single offensive rebound, and they committed six turnovers.

By the time Tony Allen lofted a runner from 12-feet out and watched it bounce twice on the rim before falling through, the Spurs had stretched a seven-point lead to 17.

“Our defense isn’t that good,” Popovich said. “When something like that happens, the other team’s having a tough night, obviously. We played pretty good defense, but that’s a hell of a team, and they had a tough night shooting the ball in the second half.”

The Grizzlies have had three tough shooting nights since beating the Spurs in overtime in Memphis just five days earlier and their coach, Lionel Hollins, is tired of trying to explain what has happened to his team in such a short time.

“When you shoot poorly, it’s a recurring theme,” he said. “When you turn the ball over, it’s a recurring theme. When you don’t guard, it’s a recurring theme.”

“We found something that worked, and we stuck with it,” said Duncan, who blocked five shots, three of them during Memphis’ long dry spell from the field. “Simple as that. Tiago (Splitter) was doing an unbelievable job battling Zach (Randolph) in there, and we found a way to get up into Rudy (Gay) and contest those shots he was making early on.

“That’s a great stretch for us. That’s what we want to put together.”

Memphis scored only 28 points in the second half, second-lowest total in one half by any Spurs opponent this season.

Nearly as remarkable: 33 Spurs assists on 44 field goals, while committing only 13 turnovers.

It was the ball movement that ratio represented that most pleased the Spurs.

“We were just playing harder,” said Stephen Jackson, who had five of the assists. “We wanted this game. It was a tough one we lost in overtime there. We know they’re a team we might have to see at the end of the season, so we wanted to continue to get better.”